This page is about the meanings of the acronym/abbreviation/shorthand RFC in the Computing field in general and in the Hardware terminology in particular.

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Definition

[Request For Comment] One of a long-es­tab­lished series of
numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by
commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities.
Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet
mail-format standard). The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by
technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the
Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution
such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted
as standards.The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact
standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important
advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI
or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a
flourishing tradition of ‘joke’ RFCs; usually at least one a
year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have
included 527 (“ARPAWOCKY”, R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973),
748 (“Telnet Randomly-Lose Option”, Mark R. Crispin; 1 April
1978), and 1149 (“A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on
Avian Carriers”, D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was
a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP-IP documentation
style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese,
describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier
pigeon (since actually implemented; see Appendix A). See also
Infinite-Monkey Theorem.The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work — they
frequently manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in
informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that
often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to
truly worldwide proportions.